“My good fellow,” says my friend—it was my kind old Uncle Major Pendennis, indeed—“I have lived long enough about town never to ask myself questions of that sort. In the world people drop you and take you up every day. You know Lady Cheddar by sight? I have known her husband for forty years: I have stayed with them in the country, for weeks at a time. She knows me as well as she knows King Charles at Charing Cross, and a doosid deal better, and yet for a whole season she will drop me—pass me by, as if there was no such person in the world. Well, sir, what do I do? I never see her. I give you my word I am never conscious of her existence; and if I meet her at dinner, I’m no more aware of her than the fellows in the play are of Banquo. What’s the end of it? She comes round—only last Toosday she came round—and said Lord Cheddar wanted me to go down to Wiltshire. I asked after the family (you know Henry Churningham is engaged to Miss Rennet?—a doosid good match for the Cheddars). We shook hands and are as good friends as ever. I don’t suppose she’ll cry when I die, you know,” said the worthy old gentleman with a grin. “Nor shall I go into very deep mourning if anything happens to her. You were quite right to say to Newcome that you did not know whether you were free or not, and would look at your engagements when you got home, and give him an answer. A fellow of that rank _has_ no right to give himself airs. But they will, sir. Some of those bankers are as high and mighty as the oldest families. They marry noblemen’s daughters, by Jove, and think nothing is too good for ’em. But I should go, if I were you, Arthur. I dined there a couple of months ago; and the bankeress said something about you: that you and her nephew were much together, that you were sad wild dogs, I think—something of that sort. ‘Gad, ma’am,’ says I, ‘boys will be boys.’ ‘And they grow to be men!’ says she, nodding her head. Queer little woman, devilish pompous. Dinner confoundedly long, stoopid, scientific.”